From Fitbit to Oculus; pick a big hitting wearable company and you'll probably find them nestled in the bosom of California's Silicon Valley, just the same as most other sectors of the technology kingdom.

But there are other hotspots for trackers, smartwatches, brain trainers and the like in more unexpected parts of the world.

For a moment at Wareable, we're going to forget about SF and NYC and well, America - sorry America, we'll remember you again in a minute - and zoom in to those other countries punching above their wearable weight to find out what's happening where they are, and why.

France

Go to any big tech expo these days and French tech startups and organisations are everywhere. In terms of homegrown events, there's Cannes Lions and VivaTech to showcase the latest innovations. That's one of the reason we chose France as the first in our new series profiling wearable tech hubs around the world in more detail.

Major players

Think of France and wearable tech and you probably think of Withings, the Paris-based health tech company that Nokia acquired last year. We've always been big fans of its platform and now all its wearables, connected scales and blood pressure monitors are now branded Nokia, making the transition complete.

There are also established tech companies like Cityzen Sciences. You might not know the name as its smart fabric tech, including the D-Shirt, powers smart clothing and other connected devices - even smart pillows - made by other brands. It has also partnered with the French space agency CNES on one of its designs.

And when talking about the wellness smart home, don't forget Netatmo, which has been ahead of Google's Nest in a number of devices like its face recognising Welcome smart security camera.

Bright young things

Head over to our dedicated feature on up and coming French wearable tech or get a taster here.

Startups wise, there's Plume Labs, which is building a connected air quality tracker named Flow, for people who live in cities – pre-sales of the clip-on accessory begin this fall. The team told us that the smart cities and internet of things movements in France are really gaining momentum in 2017.

In Montpellier, Specktr is working on a musical glove controller, set to launch later this year; Rythm, which is based in Paris and San Francisco, is looking to shake up sleep tracking with its fabric coated sweat band and AMA Xpert Eye - based out of Rennes in north west France and Boston, is creating AR video software that lets you see someones eyes as you video chat. Tres bien.

China

Wearable tech is already big business in terms of sales in China and it's not all imports like the Apple Watch and the Misfit Shine 2. The household name Huawei, but major player is Xiaomi and its partner Huami are experimenting in wearable tech and VR, including its US Amazfit brand and making a huge splash, thanks to super low prices.

Major players

Xiaomi is the name to remember - you might know of its smartphones but the Mi Band, Mi Band Pulse and Mi Band 2 fitness trackers, made by Huami, have sold extremely well in Asia, with Xiaomi jostling in the top three alongside Apple and Fitbit in terms of global wearable tech sales.

Expect Xiaomi's super affordable connected and smart home tech to make its way to the US and Europe piece by piece. Headquartered in Beijing, it makes everything: a GPS kids watch named Mi Bunny, smart air conditioning, action cameras, you name it. And don't forget the Li Ning-designed smart trainers.

Shenzhen-based Huawei does, of course, already have two Android Wear smartwatches now but it has also has a mobile VR headset for Huawei phones and a Daydream VR headset. Plus electronics giant BBK has been selling a ton of its kids GPS watch.

In neighbouring Taiwan, there's also Asus which has a couple of cheap if not spectacular smartwatches - including the new Asus ZenWatch 3 - alongside its laptops, tablets and PCs.

Then there's the role of the smart city. The 170 yuan ($26) Shuashua smart bracelet lets users in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and other cities pay for travel and taxis, at shops and restaurants, cinemas, petrol stations and hospitals. It was jointly launched by a Beijing-based tech company and the government run Municipal Transportation Card company.

Bright young things

Here's where it gets interesting. Mobvoi has had some nice crowdfunding success with its Ticwatch by focusing on Chinese apps and services like voice search.

It partnered with Frog design's Shanghai studio and is outselling Android Wear smartwatches in China already. Funny because it's actually now Google's partner for providing local services to Android Wear watches in the country. The $199 international Ticwatch 2 also proved to be an even bigger crowdfunding success last summer.

In Shenzhen is smartphone rival ZTE with its most recent Android Wear 2.0 watch, the ZTE Quartz. Also intriguing is its blingy, spin off iCharming smart jewellery range, it remains to be seen how much smart jewellery will take off.

In terms of research and concepts, there's the AutoDietary necklace, developed by a team at Northeastern University in Shengyang, Liaoning province, which counts calories through sound.

Israel

Perhaps not the first country you'd think of but Israel is known for creating innovative tech that Silicon Valley wants to pay for, particularly in the tracking space. Israel held its first wearable tech conference in 2014, with Steve Mann and Sonny Vu on the committee (though it doesn't seem to have held one since).

Major players

Israel doesn't have the kinds of global wearable tech brands that some of the other countries on the list can boast.

But its pretty busy on the acquisitions front. Oculus bought the Israeli-based hand-tracking Pebbles Interface back in July 2015, PrimeSense was bought by Apple for its motion tracking chip technology and Omek Interactive was snapped up for $40m by Intel in 2013 for its gesture tech. Other success stories include hereO which makes a GPS kids tracking watch.

Bright young things

On the startup side, there's plenty of exciting stuff coming out of Israel. LifeBeam, which has an AI trainer wearable called Vi, with R&D centres in Israel as well as Los Angeles and Asia and a HQ in New York. Read Mike's impressions of Vi's real time coaching and why less is more.

Pulse Play is a crowdfunded smartwatch for tennis players designed by double grand slam champ Andy Ram. The startup of the same name is based out of Rishpon, Israel and original Indiegogo backers are now receiving their units (two months late but hey, that's impressive for a crowdfund campaign).

LikeAGlove is the company behind those smart leggings from the end of 2015 that help you pick the perfect pair of jeans by accurately and intimately measuring your leg measurements.

UK

Brits may be famously nervous about certain pieces of wearable tech but in many ways the UK is jumping right into the fray with VR rollercoasters, augmented reality museum exhibitions and contactless payments everywhere. In terms of academic centres, the key ones to watch are Cambridge, London, Oxford and increasingly, Bristol.

Major players

Again, the UK is better known for smaller, innovative companies who either collaborate with, are bought by or provide the underlying tech for tech giants. The Wearable Tech Show is held each March at the Excel in East London and there's many other small events and festivals.

But a number of big institutions and companies outside tech are getting into wearables in a big way including the NHS, Topshop, the British Museum, the British Army and all the big banks, such as Barclays with its bPay band.

Bright young things

Shoreditch, London (home of Wareable's UK offices) is turning into a bit of hotspot for fashion tech with the likes of CuteCircuit, who make LED garments for pop stars, nearby.

In terms of VR, Mativision, which was behind the world's first 360 degree livestreamed surgery recently, is also in Shoreditch as is Bossa Studios (of Surgeon Simulator and Spy_Watch fame) and an ustwo games studio. Plus Technology Will Save Us, creators of the Maker Kit, is just up the road in Hackney.

Crowdfunding startup Blocks is a product of Imperial University in West London, the W London hotel has tech uniforms and London fashion designer Henry Holland (also in the Hoxton area) has been experimenting with payment wearables on the catwalk.

Open Bionics, which makes affordable prosthetics, is based in Bristol. Sansible Wearables is a Scottish startup that's behind the LiveSkin sensor tracking rugby tackles. And Centrica is taking on Nest with its Hive smart home platform, which has a special start-up office off London's Oxford Street.

Canada

There's a a spirit of collaboration rather than competition in Canada that's egging this wearable community on. The government is prepared to fund smart start-up ideas and there's a good balance of in terms of designers and developers with the Montreal area a hotspot for smart clothing and the Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver regions more focused on the gadgets.

What's particularly interesting is that it's created a very strong drive to dream up new and original products rather than me-too devices.

Major players

The first Pebble product was made in Waterloo, Ontario, and was funded by a Canadian government program. Now Pebble has been bought by Fitbit so we're back at Silicon Valley.

The most well-known wearable product after that would have to be the brain-training Muse by InterAxon and the Safilo X smartglasses collaboration based on the same technology. But the real reason for Canada's inclusion in our world focus is because of the sheer volume of ingenious start-ups.

Bright young things

Nymi is the bio-connected wearable looking to take care of all of our passwords and credentials to offer proximity authorisation and access to just about anything in your life that requires any proof that it's you. It's all down to being able to sense your ECG - effectively your heartbeat's fingerprint; sure to turn up embedded into another, sexier wearable some time soon.

Canadians are obviously dead keen on getting down to the gym as well with not one but three promising gym tracker devices in development. Gymtrack, Push and Hexoskin all have different approaches from your wrist to your shirt but all are set to get us training more efficiently and, therefore, probably a little less too! Imagine that.

There's many more Canadian projects of note in this space, including a vibrant fashion tech scene, that we didn't have time to mention here but doubtless we'll be focusing on them as they hit the shops.

Switzerland

Well, it doesn't get much bigger than the Swiss watch industry and while not all of the luxury timepiece makers of the Alps are that keen to get with the times, you only have to look as far as Tag's Jean-Claude Biver and his cheese cutting antics to see that they're looking to make it big in the wearable tech world.

At the same time, the universities of Lausanne, Zurich and Geneva are churning out app developers and smart tech savvy professionals that will get to use that famous Swiss Made trademark on anything they wish to turn their hands to.

Major players

Chummed up with Google and Intel on a series of smartwatches including the Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45, Tag is the obvious big player but there's also Breitling, Alpina, Frederique Constant, Mondaine and Swatch that have already shown their Swiss smartwatch hands. To date, it's all been rather excellent.

Fossil Group's Europe HQ is also in Basel and over the past 12 months, it has launched a helluva lot of hybrid watches, touchscreen watches and smart jewellery across brands including Michael Kors, Diesel and Emporio Armani with many more to come.

Bright young things

Well, Noonee's Chairless Chair is something of a wonder. Slightly reminiscent of a milking stool, these leg braces are designed to take the strain out of standing for too long. The hinged lengths allow you to sit down in apparently thin air with the weight transferred by the rods to the backs of your heels. Oh, and you can walk normally in them too. Maybe not great looking but a very clever invention to improve worker productivity.

Biowatch is a set of keys, wallet and password storage system in one. It recognises the unique pattern of the veins at your wrist and then allows Bluetooth communication with your devices to unlock, identify and authorise anything you need. It's available either as a device in its own right or a module for your favourite smartwatch.

Xsensio is a spin-off company from the Nanolabs of the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich and it's not wearables that it's thinking of - it's invisibles. The plan is to create highly-miniaturised stamps to stick on our skin and measure electrolytes, metabolites, small molecules and proteins. Get that right, and we can have a much better daily awareness of our body chemistry, and what we can do to improve it.

Finland

Big on outdoor pursuits and healthy lifestyle, it's perhaps not too surprising that the Nordic countries are something of a hotbed for wearable technology.

Finland, with around half the population size of its Scandinavian neighbour Sweden, boasts not only two leading connected fitness brands but so many start-ups and up and coming businesses you should look out for.

Major players

Polar created the world's first wearable heart rate monitor way back in 1982, five years after the company was founded. Since then, it's added fitness trackers and cross training products as well as running, cycling and multisports devices too. The affordable Polar M200 is great for coach to 5K beginners and the Polar M600 runs Android Wear but doesn't feel like a smartwatch... in a good way.

Compatriot corporation Suunto is something of a slightly different class. With a James Bond-type spectrum of activities, it represents the luxury, but not gratuitous, end of sports wearables. The company began making military compasses back in the 40s and over the years added in functionality for diving, sailing, golfing, hiking, mountaineering, alpine skiing and all running, cycling and fitness needs too. The Finnish Première wears one and you wish you did too.

Bright young things

Clothing+ got the ball rolling in 2001 after successfully producing the world's first heart rate-sensing shirt. Now with 300 employees in offices in both Finland and China, it supplies sports-based wearable tech to brands like Adidas, Under Armour and Garmin. As well as Suunto and Polar, of course.

Omegawave is, again, sports-focused but it's all about getting professional athletes up to speed. It doesn't make sensors, but instead is a high-end platform that can collate all the team and individual data you can throw at it to ensure that your next training session is precisely tailored to the condition of your body that day.

For the elderly sector of the population, Finnish company Everon is beavering away at providing GPS and alarm wearables to monitor personal safety to ensure as much independence for older generation as possible.

India

With an enormous and economically upwardly-mobile population, India is becoming a wearable technology force both in terms of device production and also as a consumer base too. Hey, Fossil just launched its Q wearables theres.

Some of the crowdfunding ideas might seem fanciful but it looks like the young app developers of the sub-continent have set their sights on all things connected self.

Major players

There's not a huge amount of wearable heritage in India as it stands but its manufacturing capital city of Chennai has been knocking out electronics for the likes of Samsung, Dell, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent for years.

With the Indian government embracing wearables via actual funding plus small start-up booster investors like Project Guerrilla, both the infrastructure and the money are in place, so long as the designers can come up with the right ideas.

Bright young things

Far too many to mention; from Bangalore to Chennai, Hyderabad to Mumbai, the wearable start-up scene in India is going off in a big way. Goqii is one to look out for. It's a fitness band offering an intriguing service that no one else is aimed at for the time being. Pay a yearly subscription and you'll get a real, live personal trainer to give you health and fitness advice based on your recorded metrics.

Then there's the Lechal smartshoe, which provides navigation by buzzing your feet to give you directions according to what you're mapping on your phone. Naturally, there's plenty of scope to add in pedometery and fitness sensing too.

Boltt is another to keep an eye. It's building an AI-powered health and fitness platform that comprises of smart shoes, fitness bands and bringing that data together to provide actionable insights and truly personalised coaching.

And if you're looking for a way to charge them up - along with any smartphones, bikes lights and GPS devices you might have on you - then fellow green shoot Lumos may come in handy. This solar-powered backpack series, designed with cyclists in mind, has already made it to market and has the subtlety, style and price to get a grip.

Bangalore-based Connovate Technologies is also well worth a look. Head honcho Bahubali Shete has banded together a crack squad of IT pros each with around 25 years experience in the business. Their first product is Gecko, a Bluetooth IoT find-it-type token and there's more connected tech on the way.

Australia

A society so completely outdoorsy that virtually all of its inhabitants live within spitting distance of the sea; Australia is all over wearable technology to see just what it can do to improve its beachfront lifestyle. There are start-ups by the dozen plus some established old hands to guide them along.

Sports crazy, the AFL is one of the most wearable-conscious pro-games with the players wired for just about every stat you could manage and the coaches with mountains of data to mine. Let's just pray they don't crack cricket wearables before we do!

Major players

Catapult Sports is a multinational superstar with offices of employees dedicated to fitness and tactical analysis. It counts half the NFL, a slew of football teams from Dortmund to Dundee and hundreds of others in rugby, basketball, hockey, rowing and more as clients.

Away from sports, the Aussies are also well up on design with the fashion-focused Wearable Experiments team of Ben Moir and Billie Whitehouse on a mission to make technology something we can put into our clothing as seamlessly as a button or clasp.

Bright young things

Akanz is an Australian company looking to make wearables become part of our daily lifestyle. Its first product is the 18K gold Plumora smart bracelet. Much like Altruis from the UK's Vinaya studio, it's about providing a tasteful way to keep you connected to your emails, phone calls, appointments and messages.

The Forcite Alpine is another promising piece of wearable sports kit courtesy of Alfred Boyadgis. It might finally manage to make the ski slopes smart in a way that Oakley and pals haven't so far. Packed with a mic for talking to your mates, a 1080p action cam to capture them falling over and measures of altitude, location and performance, it's certainly got all the features to tear it up when it launches.

1 Comment

11-Dec-2015 12:46 am

melbourne says:

Hi Guys. Interesting article and good to see Australia on your list. We established the Australian Sports Tech Network as an industry-led member-based body to better leverage off our reputation and expertise in Sport. There is lots happening in the sports tech eco system here (particularly in the sports analytics and wearables space) which is really encouraging. This is being supported by activities, programs and events to support the sector. cheers Craig Hill (Executive Director - Australian Sports Tech Network)